Eleanor and Michael pretend that Brent and Chidi are really in the Bad Place, being tortured.

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Chidi tells Brent he is not a good person.

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Brent on the verge of an epiphany.

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Counting down as the year-long experiment comes to an end.

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We have bid a tearful farewell to The Good Place, NBC's hilariously inventive, yet thoughtful, take on the afterlife. The show delivered rich characters and plenty of laughs, but it also challenged us to ponder deeper questions of what it really means to be a good person. Consistently intelligent and insightful, particularly about human foibles, each season held enough surprising turns and unexpected twists to keep a typical sitcom running for twice as many seasons. But The Good Place was never a typical sitcom. I'm pleased to report that in the series finale, the writers didn't blink while grappling with (among other things) the troubling implications of an infinite afterlife for finite humans.

(Spoilers for first three and a half seasons below. Major spoilers from the last half of S4 are below the second gallery. We'll give you a heads up when we get there.)

In the pilot episode, Eleanor Shellstrop (Kristen Bell) woke up in a generically pleasant waiting room and discovered she was dead and in "the Good Place." Neighborhood architect Michael (Ted Danson) explained the afterlife point system and introduced her to Janet (D'Arcy Carden), an AI guide who serves as the Good Place's main source of information and can pretty much give residents anything they desire (however ludicrous). Eleanor also met her "soulmate": a moral philosophy professor named Chidi (William Jackson Harper). Once they were alone, Eleanor confessed to Chidi that she'd been admitted to paradise by mistake and asked him to help her become a better person—no small feat, since by her own admission, Eleanor was a "trash bag" of a human being back on Earth.

It soon turned out she wasn't the only person mistakenly admitted. The silent monk Jianyu (Manny Jacinto), soulmate to the rich, perpetually name-dropping socialite Tahani (Jameela Jamil), was actually a dim-witted DJ from Jacksonville, Florida. We also met Mindy St. Clair (Maribeth Monroe), a former corporate lawyer whose final act of charity (while high on cocaine) made her the sole inhabitant of the Medium Place, where everything is just kind of... okay. The season ended with a genuinely shocking twist: Eleanor, Chidi, Jason, and Tahani were actually in the Bad Place; throwing them together was a novel form of torment, whereby they tortured each other. Michael was a Bad Place demon architect in disguise, and once found out, he rebooted the entire experiment, wiping the fab four's memories in the process.

S2 dug deep into the question of whether it is possible for a damned soul to become a better person after death. Eleanor kept figuring out they were really in the Bad Place for a whopping total of 803 reboots. When the demon staffers revolted, Michael joined forces with Eleanor & Company, meaning he, too, ended up studying moral philosophy under Chidi's tutelage. The many philosophers name-checked include Immanuel Kant and his categorical imperative, Aristotle, Kierkegaard, and T.M. Scanlon's seminal text What We Owe to Each Other. The series may be over, but we'll always have Chidi's brave attempt at a Kierkegaard rap, and Michael's brilliant-but-bloody simulation of the Trolley Problem.

William Jackson Harper spits the rest of Chidi's Kierkegaard rap from S2 of The Good Place.

S2 ended with another radical reset: Judge Gen (Maya Rudolph) gives the Soul Squad one more chance to become better people on Earth. It was a bold move, since Earth just isn't as interesting as the crazy surreal illogic of the show's brilliant conception of the afterlife. But S3 soon hit its stride. Among the standout moments: Michael's mind-bending mini-tutorial about how time works in the afterlife. Time isn't linear. It "doubles back and loops around," and the resulting timeline just happens to look like the signature of the name Jeremy Bearimy. (The dot over the "i" is Tuesdays. And also July. And occasionally never.)

Further Reading

Who could forget Chidi's momentary breakdown upon hearing this, making a huge pot of "chili" out of Peeps and candy? When Janet whisks everyone off to her void, they all take on her appearance, causing Eleanor to have an identity crisis and giving Chidi the perfect opportunity to pontificate on the philosophy of the self. (It's quite a performance from Carden, who must mimic each character's idiosyncrasies.) The scene where Eleanor and Michael debate determinism and free will is The Good Place at its best: delving into deep philosophical quandaries with intelligence and a light touch.

Then Michael learned that no human had earned enough points to get into the Good Place for more than 500 years and suspected the system was rigged, or at least hopelessly flawed. In the S3 finale, Michael convinced Judge Gen to repeat the original experiment of S1 with four new humans, chosen by the Bad Place. The Soul Squad would be on hand to assist. But there's always a catch when the Bad Place gets involved, and this one was particularly heartbreaking for fans of the Eleanor-Chidi soulmate coupling. Chidi was rebooted along with everything else, which removed his memories of Eleanor.

Remaking the afterlife

S4 brought everyone back to the afterlife, with all the cheesy puns and comic absurdity that comes with that goofy eternal realm. For instance, there's a magical game of Pictionary in which the drawn images come to life. It ends in utter chaos, thanks to a terrifying mutation produced by Chidi's crude drawing of a horse.

Further Reading

Eleanor is now running the experiment in the Medium Place, with four new test subjects: John (Brandon Scott Jones), a former gossip columnist who wrote nasty things about Tahani back on Earth; uber-douche male chauvinist Brent (Benjamin Koldyke); Chidi's Australian neuroscientist love interest from S3, Simone (Kirby Howell-Baptiste); and Chidi himself (a replacement for Linda—played by Rachel Winfree—who turned out to be a demon in disguise). There were twists and double crosses and daring rescues, ending with Judge Gen concluding that, yes, the afterlife's point system is flawed. But her solution is to wipe out all humans from existence in a reset to start over—not the outcome the Soul Squad was hoping for.

(Warning: major spoilers for the finale below. STOP reading if you haven't seen it yet.)

Judge Gen (Maya Rudolph) makes her ruling.

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Initial euphoria turns to horror when Gen says she will erase the Earth and start over.

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Bad Janet is a convert to the cause, and recruits all the other Janets.

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That includes Disco Janet. "Solid!"

An army of Janets. One of them is hiding Gen's world-destroying clicker-thingy.

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Conducting a search in the beige void of a neutral Janet.

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The search comes up empty.

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Another neutral Janet marbleized.

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An enlightened Chidi knows the answer.

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Shawn performing one last indignity.

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Bad Place demon Vicky (Tiya Sircar) has a gift for designing test scenarios for the renovated afterlife.

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The Soul Squad (plus Janet and Michael) arrives at the real Good Place.

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Chidi fan-boys over one of his philosophical heroes.

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Lisa Kudrow guest-stars as Hypatia of Alexandria.

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Michael tries his hand at guitar and song-writing.

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At Jason's farewell blowout bash.

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Tahani gets ready to move on.

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Judge Gen grants Michael's dearest wish.

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Chidi makes a decision.

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A bittersweet farewell.

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Where can we get this Chidi calendar?

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Eleanor has a few loose ends to tie up.

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Eleanor prepares to walk through one last door.

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Fortunately, an army of Janets—led by a Bad Janet newly converted to the cause—hides the garage door opener clicker thingy Judge Gen was going to use to erase the Earth. While the judge searches each of Janet's void—Disco Janet has the most awesome void, while we catch a glimpse of Chidi's mutant horse roaming in a Bad Janet's void—Michael wakes up Chidi and tasks him with designing a new version of the afterlife. If they can get arch-demon Shawn (Marc Evan Jackson) on board, the judge will relent and give humanity another chance.

And this is where everything that's been building, theme-wise, in prior seasons finally comes to fruition. The gang first comes up with a mishmash version of the current afterlife, with the addition of a permanent Medium Place for people who are neither truly good nor truly bad. But that doesn't really solve the problem of the flawed point system, which everyone agrees is a terrible metric for assessing human behavior and potential for improvement. After 803 reboots, the original Soul Squad have all become much better, self-aware people. And so has Michael, a Bad Place demon, and Janet, now the most advanced of her kind—heck, she even gave the judge a chance to meet Timothy Olyphant, star of her favorite Earth show, Justified.

Those reboots were the key. Maybe all human beings need is more time to learn from their mistakes. In the new afterlife, all humans will have the chance to be rebooted, as many times as necessary, until they show enough improvement to earn admission to The Good Place. Bad Place and Good Place architects will collaborate on designing custom scenarios to challenge (or "torture," from the demons' perspective) each person. Shawn reluctantly agrees, and the judge approves the new system.

To infinity and beyond

For saving all of humanity, the Soul Squad finally gets into the Good Place. On any other show, this might have been the perfect ending, but when Chidi meets one of his philosophical heroes, Hypatia of Alexandria (a cameo by Friends star Lisa Kudrow), we learn that an eternity of perfection is not all it's cracked up to be. The Good Place residents are frankly bored, and "Patty" (as Hypatia calls herself) mourns the loss of her once-sharp intellect due to the lack of any kind of challenge. Meanwhile, Michael is tricked into taking over the Good Place, and the former staffers flee.

This was my favorite twist of all, because let's face it: perfection is boring. It's why Dante's Inferno is far more powerful (and more widely read) than his Paradisio. It's why the first version of The Matrix failed to keep humans lost in the fantasy world; their minds couldn't accept a construct of a perfect world. Perfection for infinity proves unbearable: there's only so many times you can fulfill all your deepest desires before it just becomes run-of-the-mill. Heck, one reason Shawn agreed to Michael's original concept, and the new afterlife, was because he was bored with the usual torture. After your umpteenth penis-flattening, the joy really fades, even for a Bad Place demon.

After your umpteenth penis-flattening, the joy really fades.

Julian Barnes explores this dilemma at length in "The Dream," the final chapter in his 1989 novel, A History of the World in 10-1/2 Chapters. In his version of heaven, everyone gets exactly the kind of afterlife they want—which mostly turns out to be a continuation of life, only better. But as the millennia pass, everything that seemed amazing at first starts to seem banal and pointless. So everyone also has the option of opting to die off a second time, for good, and everyone takes that option eventually. As the narrator concludes, "Heaven's a very good idea, it's a perfect idea you could say, but not for us. Not given the way we are."

And that is the solution to the Good Place dilemma. Michael announces that he has created one last door. Anyone in the Good Place, when they feel they are ready, can simply walk through it and end their afterlife. Maybe. What happens beyond the door remains an unknowable mystery, much like that faced by humans on Earth pondering what happens after you die. It's the fact that life ends, and we don't know what comes next, that gives our lives purpose and meaning. It's why our actions, relationships, and so forth matter so much. The episode closes with Eleanor and Chidi snuggling on the couch, watching a perfect sunset.

Honestly, the series could have ended right there and I would have been pleased. But did you really think series creator Michael Schur was going to let us off that easy? The roughly 80-minute finale was essentially a prolonged denouement. While it seemed like fan service at times, it also brought an element of disquiet and sadness, as we see each original member of the Soul Squad reach a point where they want to move on in some way—whether they choose to walk through the final door or not.

Schur could have spun out the show for many more seasons, but in the end he applied the same principle to the series as Michael did to fix the Good Place. Knowing that its time was finite made this final season—and the entire run—especially bittersweet, and hence that much more meaningful, to its fans. Are we sad to say goodbye to the Soul Squad? Most definitely. But their madcap philosophical journey will always be with us via streaming and/or syndication.

119 Reader Comments

Is all of this because they entered with a predefined story arc? Kristin Bell said afterward that the show wasn't long enough, but that was a good thing, because it left you wanting more, even though the story was wrapped up.

Is all of this because they entered with a predefined story arc? Kristin Bell said afterward that the show wasn't long enough, but that was a good thing, because it left you wanting more, even though the story was wrapped up.

It was perfect.

It really was. One thing I found consistently impressive about the show was how it knew exactly how long to let every storyline go on before upending the board and moving on to the next thing. Its pacing was absolutely impeccable. (You might even call it...the good pace. ...not my joke but I'm totally repeating it.)

There are certainly plot points that they could have spent more time with -- the last half of the last season just really is a series of "problem is introduced and then resolved by the end of the episode" -- but that's no bad thing. The show had the good sense not to overstay its welcome, and to leave us wanting more.

I got to see the finale at the Alamo Drafthouse in Tempe. And yes, the "dry heat" joke played well with an Arizona audience.

Just an amazing show. Each season had me wondering how they'd go on from there, but they never failed. Seems oddly fitting that this is the very last "sitcom" that I was watching on network TV. I kind of felt like it was a perfect send off, as I don't know if I'll ever be interested in another network sitcom again. Everything else just looks dumb in comparison.

I do have to wonder just what Philosophy majors will point to now as proof they can find gainful employment using their degree. "Writer on 'The Good Place'" seems like it was it.

Just an amazing show. Each season had me wondering how they'd go on from there, but they never failed. Seems oddly fitting that this is the very last "sitcom" that I was watching on network TV. I kind of felt like it was a perfect send off, as I don't know if I'll ever be interested in another network sitcom again. Everything else just looks dumb in comparison.

I do have to wonder just what Philosophy majors will point to now as proof they can find gainful employment using their degree. "Writer on 'The Good Place'" seems like it was it.

I did not see it as network TV. I downloaded the series on iTunes and watched it on my own schedule, without having to FF through commercials.

When they played it in the movie theater, it was just the feed from the local NBC station. Watching it with commercials, in a movie theater, was a bit of an odd experience.

I only found out about this series a few weeks ago. Binged the first three seasons on Netflix, and now I'm dying waiting for season 4 to be available. It's rare you find a TV show that's both funny, poignant, and capable of challenging your thinking on a very deep level. It's a true gem, the kind of show you wish had 12 seasons and a couple of movies, even though you know in your heart that 4 seasons was the right call.

My wife and I are not really big TV-watchers (it took us two years to get through Brooklyn Nine-Nine, and it was our favourite show), but this was the rare show where we were drawn in and watched every episode the moment we were able to get access to it.

The acting, the writing, the set design was so good.

And it was so refreshing to have a show where just about every character except Shawn is trying earnestly to do good, and the antagonists are generally goofy. It's probably why we like Brooklyn Nine-Nine too. It was a nice escape.

Is all of this because they entered with a predefined story arc? Kristin Bell said afterward that the show wasn't long enough, but that was a good thing, because it left you wanting more, even though the story was wrapped up.

It was perfect.

Always leave a party 15 minutes too early. Leaving us wanting more is one of the hardest things to do in TV. Kudos to everyone involved in this show for pulling it off.

Note that, like the residents of the Good Place, the stoneaters in N.K.Jemisin's Broken Earth trilogy got bored and cranky after several thousand years-- there was no resolution of this problem in Jemisin's books, but the TV series found a non-trivial answer.

IMHO, The Good Place is the most overrated show ever.I find it really shallow.

Is it a cultural issue (I am French)?Anyway, I find its philosophical wanderings out of touch with reality, so I never really got what others seemed to be like there.

Then again, in a typically not French way, I am not a big fan of philosophy, which I would rather call intellectual masturbation, again because it is self-contained and not compatible with my own experience.

I hope I did not spoil the joy of those who, like Jennifer, who wrote this article, thoroughly enjoyed this show :-)

Dude, the Louvre is architecturally pretentious and the pyramid does not fit with the surrounding landscape.

I read that when Becker (1998-2004) came out, a lot of people couldn't wrap their heads around Ted Danson not playing Sam Malone. I guess he's had enough roles since then, including D.B. Russell on various CSI shows and Arthur Frobisher on Damages (2007-2012), that people can now see him as other characters.

Wow. He never stops working. :O

I haven't watched The Good Place (2016-2020) but I did like his work on Becker even though the cast changes really hurt that show. I felt Bored to Death (2009-2011) tried too hard to live up to its name, but I'll eventually give The Good Place a go at some point.

IMHO, The Good Place is the most overrated show ever.I find it really shallow.

How far did you get into the show? My wife had some issues with the construction of the afterlife and the points system as it was initially portrayed, but those concerns were all addressed in the season 1 finale. By the time the show ended, it was one of her favorite shows ever.

I think the show does get deeper as it goes on, and it always seems to deal with "practical" philosophy, showing how certain philosophical concepts actually matter and apply to real life.

I read that when Becker (1998-2004) came out, a lot of people couldn't wrap their heads around Ted Danson not playing Sam Malone. I guess he's had enough roles since then, including D.B. Russell on various CSI shows and Arthur Frobisher on Damages (2007-2012), that people can now see him as other characters.

Wow. He never stops working. :O

He's already got another show lined up. He's going to be in a show created by Robert Carlock and Tina Fey about a wealthy businessman who becomes the mayor of Los Angeles.

I haven't watched The Good Place (2016-2020) but I did like his work in Becker even though the cast changes really hurt that show. I felt [b]Bored to Death[/i] (2009-2011) tried too hard to live up to its name, but I'll eventually give The Good Place a go at some point.

If it helps spur you to watch it, Ted Danson does tend bar and throw a towel over his shoulder in one episode of The Good Place.

The thing that shocked me was the clip show episode. Clip shows are the episode that is made out of clips of previous episodes. They are cheep to film. They are quick to write. I hate them. That said, the Good Place clip show was truly brilliant. I loved it.

I bump pretty hard on the idea of anyone considering Battlestar Galatica (any version) as a show with a deep view of the afterlife. I loved Battlestar Galactica but philosophically deep it is not. It's straight up magical thinking mysticism.

It was so refreshing to see a show actually move forward constantly. I always thought they could have been like typical sitcoms, and stretched out their afterlife situations for 3-4 seasons, but they didn't because what's the point of doing that if you're not going to show any progress. And progress really was the point of the show.

And everything was just a good feel until the last episode that brought all the weight of the universe down on you once Jason decided it was time. Then it got real, and it got real good along with it.

Endings of shows are often a tossup and I'm usually disappointed with how they wrap up. Not this time. It went out exactly the way it needed to.

The thing that shocked me was the clip show episode. Clip shows are the episode that is made out of clips of previous episodes. They are cheep to film. They are quick to write. I hate them. That said, the Good Place clip show was truly brilliant. I loved it.

I don't recall a "clip show" episode. What was the episode name? What season? What was the framing device?

The show sometimes showed clips or "flashed back" to certain events, but typically provided a new spin on that content. The closest to a "clip show" I can think of is season 4's "The Answer," which shows a fair amount of clips, but also shows a hell of a lot of original material too. I'm guessing the clips in that episode are less than 10% of the overall episode, maybe less than 5%.

And everything was just a good feel until the last episode that brought all the weight of the universe down on you once Jason decided it was time. Then it got real, and it got real good along with it.

It was kind of a bummer to lose him so early in the final episode, but...it had to be that way. The order was exactly what it had to be. There's no question that Jason would be the first to decide it was time to move on. It couldn't have been any other way.

Bravo to the entire cast, staff, and writers of 'The Good Place'. An amazing job that never outpaced its own brilliance, and now never will.

My wife and I enjoyed the entire run more than just about anything on television in the last 30 years. Chidi's wave speech, especially, had us both misting up.

It reminded us of our wedding ceremony, which included two quotes from Carl Sagan and Bill Hicks, which are in the same vein. Had we been married after this finale aired, the wave quote would have taken its rightful place alongside those similarly-minded ones in our ceremony.

“Today a young man on acid realized that all matter is merely energy condensed to a slow vibration, that we are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively, there is no such thing as death, life is only a dream, and we are the imagination of ourselves. Heres Tom with the Weather.” ~ Bill Hicks

“The cosmos is within us. We are made of star-stuff. We are a way for the universe to know itself.”~Carl Sagan

“Picture a wave in the ocean: you can see it measure it, its height, the way the sunlight refracts… and then it crashes on the shore and then it’s gone. But the water is still there. The wave was just a different way for the water to be for a little while. That’s one conception of death for a Buddhist. The wave returns to the ocean, where it came from, and where it’s supposed to be.”~Chidi Anagonye

Here's to ocean from which 'The Good Place' sprang, can't wait to see what other waves may come.

Bleah... why does Hulu only show the latest episodes and not the complete 4th season??

I can't stream the final season by starting at episode 9...

The free version of Hulu only shows the most the recent few episodes, as a sort of pseudo broadcast TV kind of website, as it's owned in large part by the broadcast networks. (Or was, maybe all Disney at this point?)

When Janet whisks everyone off to her void, they all take on her appearance, causing Eleanor to have an identity crisis and giving Chidi the perfect opportunity to pontificate on the philosophy of the self. (It's quite a performance from Carden, who must mimic each character's idiosyncrasies.)

Episodes where actors play other actors' versions of a character are always near my favorite. D'arcy Carden having to do all of them at once was great.

The thing that shocked me was the clip show episode. Clip shows are the episode that is made out of clips of previous episodes. They are cheep to film. They are quick to write. I hate them. That said, the Good Place clip show was truly brilliant. I loved it.

I don't recall a "clip show" episode. What was the episode name? What season? What was the framing device?

The show sometimes showed clips or "flashed back" to certain events, but typically provided a new spin on that content. The closest to a "clip show" I can think of is season 4's "The Answer," which shows a fair amount of clips, but also shows a hell of a lot of original material too. I'm guessing the clips in that episode are less than 10% of the overall episode, maybe less than 5%.

That was the episode. When it started my thought was, "Clip show, this is a trick. I am in the Bad Place." As it turned out, the episode was one of the best. Yes, they did re shoot almost all of the scenes from a different perspective. My comment was more about my initial reaction.

The thing that shocked me was the clip show episode. Clip shows are the episode that is made out of clips of previous episodes. They are cheep to film. They are quick to write. I hate them. That said, the Good Place clip show was truly brilliant. I loved it.

I don't recall a "clip show" episode. What was the episode name? What season? What was the framing device?

The show sometimes showed clips or "flashed back" to certain events, but typically provided a new spin on that content. The closest to a "clip show" I can think of is season 4's "The Answer," which shows a fair amount of clips, but also shows a hell of a lot of original material too. I'm guessing the clips in that episode are less than 10% of the overall episode, maybe less than 5%.

That was the episode. When it started my thought was, "Clip show, this is a trick. I am in the Bad Place." As it turned out, the episode was one of the best. Yes, they did re shoot almost all of the scenes from a different perspective. My comment was more about my initial reaction.